BP3, if it appears according to your description, I would seriously doubt the professionalism of the people doing the DSMV. Then again, depression without hypomania or mania is already diganosed, is known as mild or major depressive disorder, so why they would need to rediagnose that is beyond me.

I have a lot of respect for this blog when it uses statistics to backup claims. One off claims come off as scaremongering. I mean, I found paxil to be a perfect drug for me, no problem, did everything I wanted it to, the only reason I was taken off it was because my shrink suspected that it might be what was causing impotence (it wasn't, it was actually that I was drinking caffeine before sex). This includes no withdrawal symptoms whatsoever. But would you blog about my experience with paxil? No, because it's boring. Because paxil did what it was supposed to do.

Posted by: NiroZ at February 12, 2009 09:50 PM

It is time for personable cheerleaders to stop instructing physicians,

Posted by: Lilly NC at February 13, 2009 12:17 AM

Boo to you and the Paxil stalking horse you rode in on, NiroZ.

Posted by: Lliiy NC at February 13, 2009 12:19 AM

The DSM is a huge money maker for the APA.
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/144/27/

Posted by: Lilly NC at February 13, 2009 12:26 AM

We have a lot to talk about.

Posted by: Lilly NC at February 13, 2009 12:36 AM

This idea (possible misdiagnosis) lingers in the back of my mind. My daughter dx with bp in 1987 w/ no real signs of mania that I could see - suicide attempt; vague (?)psychosis and has ever since been on lithium and an antidepressant. Complaints always on the depression side - only ever shooting into mania when a doctor gave her two SSRIs at once w/no mood stabilizer.

Jeezum - think I should bring this issue to her. Thanks for jogging my thoughts on this.

Posted by: Sorrowful at February 13, 2009 06:22 AM

I've always EXPECTED more embarrassing foolish crap to come out of DSM 5. I can't wait really, psychiatry will medicalize more of the human condition, and open up the gaping wound of its emperor with no clothes truth, it is logic, that no human distress should be medicalized until and unless these clowns can 'show us the test'. Medical diseases, require medical procedures to determine they exist. I'm so sorry to break this to you. And despair is no more a 'symptom' than jealously. Mental illness is a metaphor. A 'sick' economy, is a metaphor.

Thanks for letting me know your thoughts on the DSM 5 Philip. Of course it is to be expected that they will tinker with existing shit in the DSM. And it is shit.

Most people don't get an inkling that it is shit, until they've flushed 20 years of their lives down the toilet chasing a blind alley, the worst blind alley in the history of 'medicine'.

All it does is undermine psychiatry, psychiatry undermines itself with everything it does. How dare these killers call themselves 'bio'psychiatrists, when the 'bio' exists only the input.... of the drugs.... the 'output' from the person labeled 'patient'.... in the rest of medicine... is observable, demonstrable physical aberrations, yet the 'output' shrinks see from us... is nothing but behavior. I could get committed and forcibly drugged tomorrow, I know exactly what to say and do. Try faking diabetes.

Look, to bandy about stats like 43 percent false positive (and I know Philip this isn't YOUR statement, you're quoting, you're not the one doing the 'bandying' so don't for a second think I'm attacking you).

To bandy about stats about false positives is POINTLESS, because they can't even show me what a positive's neurology looks like.

Even in non psychiatry sectors of society and science, it is well known the 'statistics' can be fucked with to show anything... especially by a group of people that have a massive investment in not being undermined if their assertions are seen to be false. If they are reduced to voluntarily entered into psychotherapy, psychiatry is finished.

Neurologists I know, all HATE to be associated with this perversion of neuroscience that is biopsychiatry.

Diagnostics and statistical manual. Says it all.
If it's a fucking manual, and involves no biological component to the diagnosis, why train as an M.D to be able to use it?

The diagnosis is bunk. Involves no diagnostic biotechnology, yet CRIMINALLY claims to speak of biology... and the 'statistics' component... completely confounded by the power of suggestion and the issues I've spoken about before in other posts... if malpractice fucks up your life, you start to look like a statistic, this is obvious, and society expects our lives to be in shambles, so they turn a blind eye. Psychiatry can fuck up millions of people with meddling, and no one would even investigate, because if you're labeled crazy, your life is supposed to be completely fucked up. Hiding in plain sight, is the destruction of millions of people, by other human beings, not by nature. And no reason to even look into it, because we are 'write offs'. The problem lies in the power our neighbors (voters) have given politicians, to empower a group of ideologues to even label us crazy.

At the end of the day, no diagnosis is helpful to any mental patient who genuinely wants to 'get better'. You're distressed? Prove it is a brain disease. No one's seen your brain. Don't sit there and go on mind altering drugs for years and expect your life to look or FEEL normal during or after it. You claim it 'helped you'... prove you haven't become, with a little help from your 'friends', an indoctrinated ideologue with stockholm syndrome.

At the end of the day, why would I take an antiretroviral without objective evidence I had a retrovirus? Why would I fuck with my body and liver and heart? Why would I do it?

Why would I accept a man or woman handing me an 'antidepressant or antipsychotic' without inquiring a little further as to why other behaviors, reported behaviors, have no corrective pill. Is there an 'antihate' or an 'antijealousy'?

Scratch the surface, you'll find it is an SSRI, or a dopamine agonist. And then you'd be remiss to not ask who at all, has tested your seratonergic or dopaminergic system before swallowing the pill.

The terms 'antidepressant' and 'antipsychotic' are marketing terms. Devised by a group of people in our society that have as vested interests as they come, in you believing they understand the neuromechanics of human behavior... as though all we do, is determined by biology. Your lived experience is pushed to the side by these wishful thinkers.

So, it follows, without a big song and dance and heap of ideology and dogma, and terror tactics about a future no one can predict, why are people willing to perturb neurology? Or children's neurology?!

If my girlfriend leaves me... and I coat my neurology with ethanol for a couple of nights, the 'symptom' of being in despair is 'masked' for a couple of nights. Eventually I have to deal with it. If I read a confronting blog comment, that distresses me because it relates to trauma in my life and grab a cigarette and light it and suck down some nicotine, have I performed a medical procedure on myself? I've crossed my blood brain barrier, having no idea what 'disease' caused me to be stressed out reading that blog post that 'touched a nerve'.

If I undergo electroshock, and forget my girlfriend left me, or tranquilize myself with neuroleptics, I get to call it a 'medical procedure'. Why? There's nothing medical about it if you're doctor doesn't even have the ability to tell you what biological aberration you had in the first place, and what the 'treatment' did to address it.

It's a waste of life, time, and energy to mull over this statistic quoted, using the psychobabble of 'DSM speak'... because at the end of it, you're back where you started... with 100% of people in the history of psychiatry labeled Bipolar having undergone no investigative neurobiological testing, measurement, observation, of any kind during the diagnostic process. Any investigation after the fact, is tainted and confounded with myriad things... chiefly among them by the fact that the 'Bipolar goup' in the study was labeled so without any biological test, so I'd say to any comment responders, don't bother to pathetically cut and paste some bullshit study like you did last time people.

If you want to cut and paste studies, show me... say... a control group who are undergoing a bereavement... and somehow control the study for neuroplasticity... you can't do it.

As I always say to people, if consenting adults want to buy into the fraud of biopsychiatry, go right ahead, you have that right, to claim your distress is a brain disease without any human being on the planet ever having even seen your neurology on the biological level... seems absurd to me, and many, many others, but go right ahead, cross your blood brain barrier as though there's enough evidence about your specific neurology to be doing so... like the way I wouldn't stand in your way if you're sucking on a crack pipe, it's YOUR neurology, go ahead and apply guesswork tinkering to it if you like... don't blame me when your family hands over your remains, and you end up a pickled brain in a jar on E. Fuller Torrey's shelf. If you want to be mangled and fucked with, meddled with, tinkered with, by guesswork amateurs who've no idea what they are doing, in life, and in death, and have your remains desecrated, and your living brain desecrated, go right ahead... who am I to stop you?

Vote for politicians that will allow shrinks to forcibly do what do to yourself to me, and you've crossed the line into having blood on your hands.

I don't like driving on the highway behind people on mind altering drugs... but hey! life is an exercise in risk management isn't it?

But if you coerce anybody else with violent imposition of your baseless, debased ideology, I'll consider you worthy of violence yourself. That includes coercing children.

I seem to recall the woman's movement reminding the world their reproductive organs belong to them... and the word 'choice' being thrown around.

With the issue of the atrocity of coercive psychiatry, all we ask for is choice, and no babies die in the process. It's funny you know, a reasonable proposition, many of us don't even mind being imprisoned in the absence of being convicted of a crime, all we ask is that you stay the fuck out of our fucking bodies and brains with your guesswork neurotoxic crap. If you claim to be a 'nurse' or a 'doctor' and you're involved in forced intramuscular injections of neuroleptics, you're not what you think you are, nor what you say you are, your actions speak louder than words, you're a rapist. A neurological rapist. A pack of gang rapists. Who create trauma, that lasts a lifetime, and you get paid and congratulated for it.

The organ of society charged with dealing with problems in living, suffers massive (trillion dollar backed) delusions of its own. This much has become abundantly clear, the science is flawed, the business is corrupt, they are prepared to lie and kill innocent people, and write cheques, that our bodies have to cash. Yet society allows them to be draped in prestige, afford them wealth and the ear of the media and government.

It is possible, and probable, to live a life as a 'professional' where you sit behind a desk, tick off checklists from a manual, take 10 people labeled 'patients' a day, write a script mindlessly without doing any biological test, and earn a six figure salary and make your parents proud. What is wrong with this picture?

The internet has broken the stranglehold on the narrative that these genocidal killers had for decades. Now, where there is consent, and it isn't always there, there will now have a chance to be informed consent. Philip Dawdy is to be honored for playing a part in this wonderful development. Even if he is just coming to the realization that he was taken for a ride himself. (And I don't diminish your pain Philip, I've been through years of pointless pain as well).

Despair isn't a brain disease until you can show me the pill you take for say, jealousy.

Employing some clown with a script pad and no diagnostic biotechnology, who hasn't so much as looked at the wax in your ear, let alone your seratonergic or dopaminergic system, who isn't willing to sit down and get to know you and your life, and explore your traumas... is a deadly move.

Coercing someone to be imposed with some clown who has got a script pad and a goon squad with needles and solitary confinement cells and no diagnostic biotechnology, who isn't willing to sit down and get to know you and your life, and explore your traumas... is a potential slow burn extrajudicial execution against the innocent and a crime against humanity.

If 44% are false positives, and you're not even positive about what a real positive is, how the fuck can you even live with yourself voting for politicians that keep coercive psychiatry laws legal? Do you understand and comprehend the ordeals you are mandating thousands to go through? How many people have to be fucking killed, how many people have to be forcibly drugged and indoctrinated and fucked with, for your system to produce one person who thanks you for 'saving them' and 'alerting' them to the 'new important information' that they in fact have a 'brain disease' that needs 'treatment'?

The statistic that really matters, is how many people die, how many people develop coercive psychiatry induced 'PTSD' as a result of ordeals MANDATED by your state's coercive psychiatry laws, to produce just one, just one, person who is happy to be poster boy and say 'paxil worked fine for me' in describing how numbed their human distress of despair became, a person who never delved deeper than the script pad and faced the issues and traumas that created the distress in the first place?

How many angry (and they have a right to be angry) hermits, and coercively drugged, identity destroyed, social status destroyed, social pariahs need to be created, to create just one 'model patient' like 'electroboy' who 'thanks' psychiatry for his 'help'? Weigh this up... and you'll see why I'm a single issue voter.

And before anybody attempts to spew stories of 'I know someone with schizophrenia and you're a liar'... know this... I am a survivor of coercive psychiatry, I am a survivor and overcomer of everything psychiatry can throw at a person, years of iatrogenic disability, every drug in the book, so if you're going to 'speak for someone else' who isn't even here commenting and having their OWN voice... I'd watch your step. Are you living with a lifelong label of stigma that induces fear in others? No? Then don't fool yourself you're even on the level to engage with me, if you're going to stand on the stilts of the experience of others who aren't even here to speak for themselves.

Has the state ever tortured you? Are you a survivor of state torture? Are you a survivor of all of a sudden becoming the new 'nigger'? You are not in a position to even engage with my demonstrated strength. There is something more pernicious than a blog comment responder that would presume to have the right to say they simply 'know' or have 'worked with' people who've been through coercive psychiatry, and stand on that to engage me, and I can guarantee, that as someone who is more invested, name and identity and lifeblood than you will ever be, that I won't even bother engaging with you.

For too long others have spoken for us. I'll speak for myself. I survived, recovered, no thanks to you, no thanks to drugs, no thanks to shrinks, no thanks to my fellow citizens who hung me out to dry by allowing coercive psychiatry to colonize and monopolize my life with a fraudulent worldview on human distress. No thanks to the science media, no thanks to academia, no thanks to anyone but myself and fellow survivors, and dissident shrinks who've stood up for morality and logic.

If you claim to be a 'carer' of a loved one who has been smeared and labeled mentally ill... I'd be interested to know what measures you took to protect your loved one from indoctrination and ideology that were placed into them by shrinks from the get go. You deferred to authority, that's all you did. And in the process, hung your loved one out to dry. You thought the shrinks knew more than you? Did you ask them for evidence of biological causation at the start? Or did you take their word for it? You're happy to have eugenic lies told about your family genetics? Did you demand objective proof doctors had examined your son or daughter's genome? No.

I will not be censored. There will come a time, soon, when your loved ones, and those you 'know' who've been labeled and drugged and destroyed by shrink ideology, can find me in living color, in HD, online, uncensored, freely showing them how I recovered and how they can too. And there is nothing you can do about it.

43% Bipolar false positive? You're talking about a blind alley, drawn down a further blind alley.

I'm not sure you'll approve this long comment Philip, if not, no bad blood mate, you are doing a good job, and you're on your journey to flushing out of your life your needless labeling of your real, human distress... you call it a misdiagnosis at this point... that is your right, to use shrink terminology and shrink ideology to define your life and identity, but please respect those who were thrown into this system by state force... who have no obligation to explain what happened to them in terms of the ideology the state forced on them... especially in the absence of any diagnostic biotechnology, and that is what we are dealing with.

There are those who never had the chance to freely and voluntarily appraise and research biopsychiatry as a way of dealing with human distress, provide informed consent, and decide for themselves the merits of this (diagnostic biotechnology free) worldview of human distress and freely enter into a contract with a psychiatrist as a real, freely contracting, paying 'consumer' and 'client'. There are those who are no more apt to be labeled 'consumer' than a hunger stiker at guantanomo bay being forced fed food (or drugs)... And when these people, who have been violently coerced extrajudicially by the state, into giving themselves, body and mind and future, to biopsychiatry, learn that they were lied to, you'd be remiss to censor their contribution to the debate around a 'science' that wasn't even their choice to be involved in... stormtroopers of state violence came into our lives and indoctrinated us into it, from the get go... so if you're going to censor anybody... you stand to be asked to think way more seriously about censoring someone who wouldn't even be visiting this blog had it not been for state violence. And by violence, I mean others deciding for me if I get brain damage, others deciding for me if I get heart disease, others deciding for me if I'm placed at risk of getting parkison's disease from dopaminergic system tinkering, others deciding for me if I get diabetes, others deciding for me if I get liver damage, others deciding for me if I endure the humilation of a reduced cognitive function for years, and lose my organic, natural human experience, and lose unadulterated love, dignity, and agency to complete college, interact with my friends, family and hopes, without tranquilizer drugs.

And all my experiences took place in the 2000s... so don't kid yourself the system has become more humane.

And don't kid yourself that I had a 'bad experience'... every experience in the mental health system viewed as 'good'... is something loaded, confounded, with indoctrination and ideology and blind alleys... and every resultant, after the fact 'crisis' you can tell me about, is something you can't objectively claim wouldn't have taken place if a sad, dismal, hopeless, biologically deterministic worldview fueled by billions in pharma dollars, hadn't colonized and monopolized human distress in our society.

Posted by: Lynette at February 13, 2009 07:19 AM

For the most part I respect and agree with what you have to say in your blog, but the recent attacks on Bipolar II have been hitting close to home for me. Being someone who carries this diagnosis and struggles greatly I tend to take offense when you talk about it not being a real illness/diagnosis. It may be bipolar disorder without full blown mania but hypo-mania isn't always fantastic. While it may feel like a pleasant state to be in in the moment, in the end it still leaves me with financial issues, relationship problems, completely messes up my sleep, makes it hard to focus which makes school/work sometimes impossible , causes me to make bad decisions...etc. Then there's the inevitable crash that follows which is never fun. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think you're description of Bipolar II as "the no mania required bipolar disorder" is misleading and inaccurate.

I totally and completely agree that Bipolar II is turning into a catch-all diagnosis and way too many people are being shoved into this box. A good friend of mine just told me her sister was being diagnosed as "bipolar without mania/hypomania". When I asked her how that was possible since mania/hypomania are required to dx bipolar she said "it's because she has a tendency towards anger/rage". Go figure.

I think that Bipolar III would be a disaster. I bet the Abilify people would be the first to jump on that.

Philip Dawdy responds: i've not said bp2 isn't real. i'm just not convinced it's bipolar per se. certainly the symptoms are real, but why go through life with a bp label (which causes all manner of problems) when it strikes me that bp2 belongs more to depressive disorders?

Posted by: Ashley at February 13, 2009 09:33 AM

It's all so confusing. I was diagnosed with BP2 a few years ago and put on Lamictal. I've always had substance abuse issues and I was told this was self-medicating my bipolar 2. The Lamictal helped with some intense drug cravings (and other compulsive behaviors) but it made me feel very wound up and hyper. One night I felt so "wound up" after work I went to go have a beer to calm down. I ended up getting drunk and going totally out-of-control, got in a fight, the cops showed up, I was called "psychotic", was wandering around the streets of NYC in a snow-storm completely out of my mind. I wasn't just drunk I was drunk-plus. It was like I was on crack!

The next day my pdoc prescribed Zyprexa. It was helpful for a time and definitely grounded me, for about a week my mind was the quietest it's ever been. But, was it appropriate? I was "self-medicating" a medication-induced agitation which brought on the only true "manic" episode I've ever had in my life.

I've always had anxiety and depression and for years I was a really hyper guy who made very impulsive decisions that blew up in my face. Is this bipolar and I need an atypical antipsychotic? Or does this mean I need to lay off the drugs and alcohol, stay in AA, and get some good therapy?

At this point, I've given up on the atypicals. I revisited Zyprexa hoping it would create the same quiet in my head it did the first time I tried it. I ended up sleeping 15 hours a day and my anxiety was even worse than before.

Posted by: David at February 13, 2009 09:47 AM

After years of being diagnosed with dysthymia and given anti-depressants that made me feel so awful I could not take them for more than a month or so, I was diagnosed with Bipolar II. I believe that it had been missed becuase often (male) psychiatrists tend to minimize depression in women, seeing women as 'naturally' more emotional and because, though I knew that I would occasionally have a week or so of very particularly good days with enormous energy and overwhelming feelings of love, I never thought to speak of them to a doctor.
For the past two years, I have been taking lamotrogine, the ridiculously expensive even in generic form drug. I feel better than I have in years. The bad side effects went away pretty quickly, no rash and so on.
I think that Bipolar II is a legitimate diagnostic category and that I have been appropriately diagnosed. I wasn't sure about it but when I was looking back over my old journals this summer, I noticed that there would be one entry about how fantastically wonderful life was followed by eighteen entries about how nothing would ever be right, and then the pattern would repeat itself. It explains certain patterns I have noticed in my life better than any other alternative explanation.
Additionally, the category of Bipolar II allows for differences in the judgment of psychiatrists as to what behavior is manic. This is a necessary thing due to the regrettable bias in the way women's behaviors are analyzed in a psychiatric setting and because people's characters differ: one would expect that the mania of someone already outgoing would differ from that of someone who is extremely introvert. Whether or not the differentiation of mania and hypomania reflects any actual neurological difference or difference of pathology is to some extent immaterial. If the two classes of behavior are analogous but differ only in degree then the use of the terms will no more diminish our ability to diagnose and understand mania than would our ability to diagnose and understand fevers would be harmed by differentiating between high and low fevers.
A fever is a fever but a low fever can be treated at home while a dangerously high fever requires a trip to the hospital. Mania and hypomania are both mania but the strength and immediacy of treatment differs in a useful way.
There is no doubt that one should take a psychiatric diagnosis as seriously as a diagnosis indicating surgery and have a second and a third opinion in just the same way. Psychotropic drugs are strong but so is the force of mental illness in its throes. It's always, like surgery, a costs-benefits issue.
This Bipolar III thing, though; it sounds off but I can't really give an opinion until I've seen the criteria.

Posted by: Katherine at February 13, 2009 10:09 AM

Lynette, you or others like you have full rights to rage, anger, and to bashing everyone else who, as you say, bought in to anything falling under the roof of mental illness, pickled brains, genetics, etc. You or someone else took me to the cleaners over my remarks, including the fact that my son was killed by Zyprexa. I guess there will never be a time in your life that you will have any understanding, sympathy, or acceptance for the likes of me. Believe me, I do not want any from you.

I carry rage, too. But to get rage coming off so strongly from someone like you is hard; showering onto my head is hard. Hard enough that I will leave furious seasons for awhile.

I am glad for you. I am also glad that you don't post as you did every day or you would permanently drive me off these boards.

Posted by: Sorrowful at February 13, 2009 12:44 PM

I found this to be an interesting read. I do agree that overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis can be problems as far as Bipolar disorder go, as the disorder can be especially tricky to properly diagnose.

The diagnostic standards that are used are not perfect, but they are far better than nothing.

I live with Bipolar type I disorder and it has ruined my life many a time before I accepted the diagnosis and came to terms with it. The discovery of a simple combination of two medications (Seroquel, Trileptal) have really changed my life for the better and I am thankful that I do not need to go back into mental hospitals or deal with the crazy things that I have done while manic and psychotic.

It does pain me to see that at least one of the replies here to this post seem to think that medications are wholly unnecessary and are only a means for "big pharma" to get rich. It also bothers me that people have the audacity to claim that mental illness is not real, or that mental illness is taking human behavior and labeling it. To those who feel this way, I wish you could be in my shoes for a few years and see if you don't change your mind. Mental illness is real and those who suffer from it need the medications and require the proper therapy to recover.

I feel that the mental health system has much room for improvememt, but it has gotten much better in the state of NJ where I reside since this all started for me at age 17. I am now 26 and I am comfortable knowing that I am bipolar; it helps me to know that there is a reason for some of the terrible things that have happened in my past and now that I accept it and go along with the necessary treatment my life is getting back to normal again.

I wish that there were a way to test people in order to find out for certain as to whether a person has a mental illness or not, but the human mind is not that simple. I can understand why some people may scoff at psychology because no solid biological links to illness have yet been discovered, but I have seen many of my peers who suffer from mental illness recover in the programs that I have had to go through.

The illnesses are out there and modern psychology is doing its absolute best to ensure that those who need treatment are getting it. Unfortunately, most people who do not live with a mental illness or have a family member or loved one with an illness are so uneducated about it all that horrible misconceptions spread quite rampantly.

I really wish that people were more informed about these things and would stop touting their opinions about psychology, mental illness, and medication as solid truth.

It can be difficult enough for someone who has a mental illness to come to terms with the diagnosis and take the steps to get the proper treatment for their condition. It only hurts when people keep saying this stuff isn't real, or it's natural and shouldn't be treated, and that medications are horrible.

Posted by: Eric at February 13, 2009 01:37 PM

That article about misdiagnosing bipolar disorder looked to see if patients had I, II, or NOS as opposed to depression with some agitation. That latter category made up those who were misdiagnosed as bipolar. The authors believed in the validity of the bipolar II and NOS diagnoses, as I do too. Those who are truly bipolar (I, II, NOS) suffer tremendously when given antidepressants (AD), but usually recover with mood stabilizers. There are some with bipolar II who "respond" well to just an AD raising the question if the diagnosis is in fact depression with some agitation or irritability with no true hypomanic symptoms. But those with true hypomania or mania, an AD can be a death sentence. It was almost in my case (without meds: some hypomania) as an AD had me standing on an overpass of the Henry Hudson Parkway in NYC to end a depression that was worse than any I had ever experienced before. This AD also gave me an experience of rabid mania. Earlier recognition of hypomania may have kept me from making the costly mistake of taking an AD. That is typical for people with bipolar II which is why this diagnosis HAS to be made separate from depression. But as that article points out, doctors are not making a clear distinction between true hypomania and just a little irritability and putting those with the latter on some strong and potentially hazardous mood stabilizers when either therapy or an AD alone are appropriate.

Posted by: Tony at February 13, 2009 02:37 PM

I work in a psych ward. A psychiatrist recently told me that a patient suffered from "Baby Bipolar." I kid you not. This is why psychiatry is viewed as a sham by most physicians.

Posted by: Tom at February 13, 2009 07:53 PM

The DSM is a fundraiser for the APA. Here's Pat Risser:
http://home.att.net/~LetFreedomRing/updates/MadPride.html

Posted by: Lilly NC at February 13, 2009 08:20 PM

Hey 'Sorrowful'... you're talking to the wrong party. Demonstrate for me where and when I allegedly attacked you about your son. I didn't even know about your son. You want to tell lies about me?

If your son died from a drug which is a dopamine agonist and no one ever tested his dopaminergic system in any way don't blame me. I'm not about to take an AIDS drug when I've got no HIV test in front of me and then complain when the AIDS drug kills me.

You want 'attention'? Is that it? You want me to say I care if you leave furious seasons, you want to grand stand and you want to publicly attempt to leverage Philip to censor me? Go on back to the NAMI 'Don't blame us!' Website then.

The rest of you... you're clearly not yourselves today. Clearly and admittedly under the influence of mind altering drugs... and demonstrably loaded with nothing but empty 'DSM speak' indoctrination. What true believers you really are. Never occurred to you that being trained by the best, to pathologize your every mood, thought and hour on this earth might put you in the quicksand of biological determinism? You people are clearly good little customers and mental patients, playing your roles wonderfully and buying those neurotoxic compounds without fail.

When you've been told, with the force of terror tactics, that you have no free will by someone you believe knows the human brain yet has never even tested yours, and you take a leap of faith and begin living the label... what your life becomes is a series of reports and snapshots on how you anecdotally 'feel' your new drug 'seems' to be 'working'. Nothing more.

If you're happy to numb and tranquilize your human experience go right ahead. Don't complain to me when you're 40 or 50 and slowly realize you spent years of your finite time on this earth looking out on the world through a chemical haze of mind altering drugs and missed out on the fulfilling experience of touching life the way you came into this world. You're not yourselves, you're a synthetic, degraded version of yourself.
Of course now you've acclimated your neurology to block or spew less or more of random guesswork neurotransmitters, for years.... if you yank it cold turkey you could fuck yourself up even worse. What a tangled web we weave!

You have no idea what it is like to touch life for the first time after chemically lobotomizing yourself for years. Organic neurology is the most pure, beautiful and necessary thing for a real, fully lived life. Anything less, anything hindered, desecrated by mind altering drugs is a crime against nature. And again, if you're going to claim your brain is diseased, I'd be interested to see what diagnostic biotechnology was employed in the diagnostic process. I'm sorry... 'bibles'.... psychiatric bibles or any other bible... won't be enough to convince me.

I find it ultimately sad that a bible was enough to convince you to cross your blood brain barrier. It proves our real age of reason isn't here and won't be for some time. And then you come on here and speak of your years of 'struggle' while on mind altering drugs. Geez, your drug couldn't be your problem could it? Nor the fact you seem to believe, with 9/11 hijacker level fanaticism, that a mysterious neuronal force nobody has ever seen or measured, takes control of your free will and moods? And you say this... WHILE on mind altering drugs!... don't you see how incredulous you all look?

And you wonder why there is a stigma around so called mental illness. It's only natural that the public would be fucking terrified of someone who apparently has no free will, or varying degrees of it depending on how indoctrinated and drugged they are. It's only natural. Are you scared of drunk drivers? Yes. You should be. Are you scared of someone who spends his life bemoaning how a 'disease' that is voted into existence in each new DSM and doesn't correlate to any demonstrable physical aberration, spends his life bemoaning the 'roller coaster ride' of varying free will that he claims his 'disease' is taking him on today?

Of course people are going to shun and stigmatize such an unpredictable man. Of course they are. I don't want to be driving on the highway with you. You're choc full of mind altering drugs. And when something goes wrong in your (subdued) lives, you're so convinced you're 'wired' to experience a low ten times worse than any other human on earth, and you tell yourself this, and expect this, so much so that your lived experience becomes it.

Sometimes it is hard to figure out who your worst enemy is.... the shrinks who loaded you up with dogma and drugs, or yourself.

The only iron clad, successful, stable, completely recovered, ex mental patients are those who have deconditioned themselves out of psychiatric dogma of all stripes. Those who don't live in terror of what the fake 'brain disease' is going to burden them with next. And of course, we no longer take psychiatric drugs. Because those prescribing these biological agents, have never seen our fucking biology. Get it? It's simple logic. Nature created the blood brain barrier to keep neurology pristine. And my neurology's fucking pristine, mark my words. Whatever extreme states of distress I've experienced in the past, I now completely understand. And I don't understand them to be caused by my neurology.

My foot just moved, ideologues like you would claim it moved 'as a result of neurotransmitters in the brain sending a signal to my CNS to my muscle to my leg to my foot', sure can't tell me where free will came into it, or maybe someone pushed me from behind. You've all been pushed. Your worldview has moved. Your brains haven't betrayed you, other human beings have. It's hard enough to count on anyone in this life. And you've bought the most dangerous lie of all, that you can't even rely on yourself.

Sure, you know what, in 1000 years neuroscience might (though it stands a fat chance) reverse engineer human thought with a pill. If they do, count on it being put in the water supply to control your mind. Right now, to claim despair is a 'chemical imbalance' just because you don't like despair, is childish. Despair has been part of the human experience since we evolved. In a complex civilization with broken families and a post modern age of empty, fearful lives huddled in faceless, cold, alienating cities, where you're constantly told your existence means nothing and you know one day you'll be about as remembered as the people in old cemeteries... it is easy to fall in love with psychiatric ideology and while away your life in a numbed state of wishful thinking mind altered tranquilized, chemical haze.

I'd double check, triple check, before you buy into this rubbish though, that you haven't cheapened your humanity, and degraded the human experience for yourself and by example, for your children and all those who see you as a legitimate example of someone they 'know' who 'suffers' the 'dreaded chemical imbalance'... what you might play a part in creating is a trillion dollar orgy of business and shrinks propagandizing an unproven worldview that reduces your humanity to nothing but a symptom of a disease no doctor's ever even seen in you any other place than on a page of a DSM bible.

There was a time, for many years... when I would write a post like Katherine's above... this whole 'for years my life had ups and downs... but now my doctor 'told' me 'what it was'... I'm so thankful... he 'discovered' my brain disease, by opening a book! I'm so happy to have a name for my pain.

I've got a name for my pain too. It's called life. There's no cure for life. This blog is colonized and populated by the 'I've got a disease I just need safer drugs crowd'. News for you, it's never safe to put a drug in your body when you're not diseased. It wrecks your health. Don't complain when you are maimed or killed by a drug, unless the state forced it into your body in which case I would fight and die for your rights. And if you're a kid and your parents forced the drug into your body, I would also fight and die for your rights.

Posted by: Lynette at February 13, 2009 08:22 PM

Lynette,

Is it really incomprehensible to you that the world would be desperate for a reductionistic answer to madness? Crazy people and their problems are frightening and baffling, especially to those outside the experience, so of course they would seek an easy solution. And usually, crazy people themselves are not particularly enamoured of their "pristine" neurobiological state. We're talking about people who see and hear things that are not there, think they're being followed by people who don't exist, cut themselves, make completely self-destructive decisions based on irrational beliefs that wreck their lives over and over again, spend months in bed immobile, and usually create drama wherever they go.

I'm not talking about people who get a little depressed because they got laid off. I'm talking about people who go insane and do so OVER and OVER and OVER again and again and again.

So, here comes "science" and "brain chemistry". It all sounds important and real. So, then follows the hope that this seemingly intractable insanity will cease and there will be a little peace (for those inside and outside the experience).

Yes, it may all be a delusion but that doesn't mean those under the mistaken belief don't deserve compassion. They're suffering and seeking relief.

Starting out by trying to understand people's experience and perspective from the inside (instead of just labelling them as 'childish' when you haven't walked a SINGLE DAY in their shoes) you might actually convince some of them of your point of view.

Are you actually interested in convincing anyone of your point of view? Or is this just a place to spew your self-righteous venom?

Posted by: David at February 13, 2009 10:52 PM

Lynette,

Philip has a fairly disparate following - many are survivors of psychiatric treatments themselves. Several commenters have lost loved ones to the system as well.

I guess until you have had a loved one in a desperate condition can you fully understand what motivates a person to consider using such dangerous substances. You feel powerless to stop the (self)destruction and will do anything to save your loved ones. You'll listen to a doctor who should know better. You'll be taking a chance not really knowing he full risk.

It's easy to sit back and argue a position in the abstract. It's not so easy when your son, daughter, spouse, or parent is on their very last leg. Don't add to their pain unnecessarily.

Paul

Posted by: Paul at February 13, 2009 11:08 PM

I appreciate Lynette's writing . I.M.O. Lynette should make a blog for the longer than average comments.

Telling someone not to be angry and censor ones anger because it can hurt peoples feelings... would make the world a mute but peaceful place.
And if angry, with anger flowing through oneself , self censoring is hard to come by.

Personal attacks are off limits though. Don't read yourself into things intended to be generalizations of all humans, that would be paranoid.

Posted by: mark p.s.2 at February 14, 2009 04:10 AM

Your way is not the only way, Lynette. You're making an ass of yourself.

Posted by: nvam at February 14, 2009 05:19 AM

the recent attacks on Bipolar II have been hitting close to home for me. Being someone who carries this diagnosis and struggles greatly I tend to take offense when you talk about it not being a real illness/diagnosis. It may be bipolar disorder without full blown mania but hypo-mania isn't always fantastic. While it may feel like a pleasant state to be in in the moment, in the end it still leaves me with financial issues, relationship problems, completely messes up my sleep, makes it hard to focus which makes school/work sometimes impossible , causes me to make bad decisions...etc. Then there's the inevitable crash that follows which is never fun. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think you're description of Bipolar II as "the no mania required bipolar disorder" is misleading and inaccurate.

Thank you. Hypomania isn't classic mania, but neither is it normal functioning. This "hypomanic edge" I keep hearing about? I have never personally experienced it. Mine is more of a "hypomanic detriment". It isn't pleasant, I always end up doing something embarrassing, and it's always followed by some sort of depressive crash.

I do not agree, though, that Bipolar II should be classified more as a depressive disorder. It was not until I found a psychiatrist who approached my medications from the standpoint of controlling hypomania first and depression second that I was able to start getting a real handle on things.

...It also bothers me that people have the audacity to claim that mental illness is not real, or that mental illness is taking human behavior and labeling it. To those who feel this way, I wish you could be in my shoes for a few years and see if you don't change your mind. Mental illness is real and those who suffer from it need the medications and require the proper therapy to recover.

Nicely put. Anyone may hold any opinion he wishes about the reality of mental illness and the need for medication, but those beliefs don't change the reality of my own experience. Two thirds of my relatives (grandparents, aunts/uncles, first cousins, parent, brother) on my mother's side have some sort of mental illness. These are not recent, "fad" diagnoses. One aunt spent a good part of the 1970s in the South Carolina state hospital. My mother was hospitalized for two months when I was a child. My own illness began in 1977 when I was eleven years old. The symptoms that emerged then are, more or less, the same things I have problems with today. And when I take the right combination of medications, those symptoms are less problematic.

So whatever one's claims against the reality of mental illness may be, what I see (and have seen) in my own life remains.

Posted by: lkhllywd at February 14, 2009 09:35 AM

I would not think to attempt to muffle anyone on this site. Nor will I ever share my life experience on this blog again. I will just simply disappear, as the rules for this blog are not any that I would willingly expose myself to, ever again in my life.

Make of it as you will, but it is actually my choice and it is what I choose. No more wishing that Philip would censure or otherwise read all these entries. That is his choice to make.

For those of you who attempted to react with sensitivity over time regarding my personal experience, I say thank you. I have plenty to say, but it will never be said here again. Ever.

Thanks to Lynette for driving this longtime reader away.

Posted by: Sorrowful at February 14, 2009 01:29 PM

Sorrowful, I wish you would reconsider your decision even though I totally understand.

I will greatly miss your contributions and am sorry for the pain you have to deal with in losing your child.

Posted by: AA at February 14, 2009 03:23 PM

with regret, i am closing this thread. also, lynette has been banned after leaving new comments today that directly attacked and openly made fun of another commenter, which i won't tolerate.

Posted by: Philip Dawdy at February 15, 2009 09:32 AM